No, I haven't written about it--it is one of the 5 or 6 articles in my
head that don't seem to get written. If I did, I'd try to track down an
article (I've forgotten the author's name) from about 10+ years ago that
made this distinction between clients and citizens. With this
distinction in mind, it would be fairly easy to apply it to the New
Deal, because it was then, at the beginning of the modern welfare state,
that a residual approach established peoples' status as clients, with
all the stigma of subservience and dependency that such a designation
implies. This is very different than the universalism of the
Scandinavian welfare states, where consumption is at least partially
socialized, the right to benefits is unquestioned, and people aren't
downgraded from citizens to clients when they receive them.
Joel Blau
Michael Perelman wrote:
Joel, have you written about this. I would like to learn more.
On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 07:04:53PM -0400, joel blau wrote:
One of the best indices of how the New Deal both addressed and defused
the mass movements of the 1930s is the way that its social welfare
programs turned people into "clients," rather than full-fledged
"citizens." Although people who were poor (ADC), unemployed (UIB), or
old (Social Security) were now enfranchised in this newly constituted
welfare state, their status as "clients"
marked them as subordinate and retained a distinct whiff of welfare as
little more than organized state charity.
Joel Blau
Michael Nuwer wrote:
Jim Devine wrote:
On 10/9/07, Michael Nuwer
<nuwermj-/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In my view it was not the industrial capitalist who understood the
relationship between mass production, high wages and mass
consumption. I
think it was the new deal state, in the 1930s, that pushed this piece
onto capital.
and it was the Bonus March and a lot of other mass struggles (sit-down
strikes, etc.) that pushed the New Deal state to do anything it did
that was worthwhile.
I don't disagree, but I do wish to emphasis that the New Deal state did
not implement or adopt the demands of the mass struggles. It implemented
something different.
The specific issue that I'm emphasizing in this thread is that these
struggles were not only, or primarily, demanding a share of the benefits
from a mass production economy. Significant parts of the labor force
were not yet "prisoners of the America dream," to borrow a phrase from
Mike Davis.
Throughout the period from 1880 to the 1930s important parts of the
working class struggled for something which never emerged. And, for
sure, that struggle was not for a piece of the modern mass consumption
pie.
It was only after labor's alternative (trade-union autonomy) was
closed-off by the courts and statute that industrial pluralism could,
and did, emerge. American capital was forced to make compromises to
labor under this newly emerging system, but these compromises in no way
threatened the primary prerogative to manage the production process or
to determine the social division of labor.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
michaelperelman.wordpress.com
